Super Mario Bros. (1993) Movie Review
Jan 8, 2022 17:09:23 GMT -5
Post by anayo on Jan 8, 2022 17:09:23 GMT -5
I just finished rewatching the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie. The last time I saw it was almost 15 years ago. It's just as horrendous as I remember. It's so slimy how it sells itself on the tacit promise that it's going to have Mario stuff in it. Technically it does, but everything is so batshit weird, like I'm watching someone's bizarre, nyquil-induced dream about Mario.
The goombas are 7 foot tall freaks in trench coats with demonically grinning shrunken heads. Mario's mushroom power-ups are represented by this pervasive fungus smothering everything like an invasive species. But the fungus also presciently helps the heroes when they’re in a bind, because it is secretly Princess Daisy's Dad who got turned into a fungus by the bad guys. While in fungus form, Daisy’s Dad - the king - is somehow aware that the Mario brothers are here to save the day, so he wants to help them prevail. (I guess maybe that's supposed to harken back to how the monarchs in Super Mario 3 got turned into animals? That might be giving this movie's creators too much credit, though.) Mario's ability to jump really high makes it into this movie in the form of gas-powered rocket boots which the heroes strap onto their feet to propel them into the air. I’m not sure anyone was asking for such an elaborate explanation for Mario’s jumping abilities, but this movie has it.
It really gets down my craw how all of the people in the mushroom kingdom are supposed to be "dinosaurs", but they're just plain human actors. There are throwaway lines about how they all think it's totally weird humans evolved from apes, eat an omnivorous diet instead of just meat, etc. as well as some baffling special effects, like one part where the they speed up the frame rate when the main villain's wife moves her head. I guess that's supposed to move her head movements look jerky, like a bird or lizard? It happens once then literally never again, so I don't know. There's another part where the main villain's eyes briefly flash with reptilian-looking irises. But after that he just looks like a normal human being with a weird haircut.
I don't know why I'm going on so much about this aspect. I guess it's that they put so much work into the set dressing, computer effects, and animatronics, yet for this one major detail the movie is like, “Take my word for it. All these people are dinosaurs.” But I’m like, “Uh… they don’t look like dinosaurs, they look like people.” And the movie’s like, “Please use your imagination for that part.”
Part of me thinks the movie may as well just dispense with the Mario theme and be its own thing, but it's not charming, likable, or interesting enough to do that. It lacks the unintentional comedy of a foreign director trying and failing to depict American culture, like The Room, Troll 2, or Samurai Cop. It doesn’t have the charming ineptitude of an ambitious project biting off way more than it can chew. All of this movie’s production values are quite competent. They’re just all in service of a story, world, and characters that I don’t care about.
When I was a kid in the 90's I remember so many older people seemed like they just couldn’t “get” video games. They acted like they were these weird alien relics intruding on the normal world of Lincoln logs, yoyos, marbles, or whatever they played with when they were small. Whenever I’d try talking with the older generation about Nintendo or Sega, their eyes would glaze over. They’d mispronounce characters’ names and have trouble retaining other details, like lore, power ups, and control schemes. At times I sensed they were happy that video games made me happy, but something was preventing them from grasping why they made me happy. So they couldn’t relate to me or directly share my enthusiasm. The Super Mario Bros. movie feels like some studio wrote a multimillion dollar check to people like this. They’ve made a movie about something they just don’t understand, which is why it doesn’t work.
The goombas are 7 foot tall freaks in trench coats with demonically grinning shrunken heads. Mario's mushroom power-ups are represented by this pervasive fungus smothering everything like an invasive species. But the fungus also presciently helps the heroes when they’re in a bind, because it is secretly Princess Daisy's Dad who got turned into a fungus by the bad guys. While in fungus form, Daisy’s Dad - the king - is somehow aware that the Mario brothers are here to save the day, so he wants to help them prevail. (I guess maybe that's supposed to harken back to how the monarchs in Super Mario 3 got turned into animals? That might be giving this movie's creators too much credit, though.) Mario's ability to jump really high makes it into this movie in the form of gas-powered rocket boots which the heroes strap onto their feet to propel them into the air. I’m not sure anyone was asking for such an elaborate explanation for Mario’s jumping abilities, but this movie has it.
It really gets down my craw how all of the people in the mushroom kingdom are supposed to be "dinosaurs", but they're just plain human actors. There are throwaway lines about how they all think it's totally weird humans evolved from apes, eat an omnivorous diet instead of just meat, etc. as well as some baffling special effects, like one part where the they speed up the frame rate when the main villain's wife moves her head. I guess that's supposed to move her head movements look jerky, like a bird or lizard? It happens once then literally never again, so I don't know. There's another part where the main villain's eyes briefly flash with reptilian-looking irises. But after that he just looks like a normal human being with a weird haircut.
I don't know why I'm going on so much about this aspect. I guess it's that they put so much work into the set dressing, computer effects, and animatronics, yet for this one major detail the movie is like, “Take my word for it. All these people are dinosaurs.” But I’m like, “Uh… they don’t look like dinosaurs, they look like people.” And the movie’s like, “Please use your imagination for that part.”
Part of me thinks the movie may as well just dispense with the Mario theme and be its own thing, but it's not charming, likable, or interesting enough to do that. It lacks the unintentional comedy of a foreign director trying and failing to depict American culture, like The Room, Troll 2, or Samurai Cop. It doesn’t have the charming ineptitude of an ambitious project biting off way more than it can chew. All of this movie’s production values are quite competent. They’re just all in service of a story, world, and characters that I don’t care about.
When I was a kid in the 90's I remember so many older people seemed like they just couldn’t “get” video games. They acted like they were these weird alien relics intruding on the normal world of Lincoln logs, yoyos, marbles, or whatever they played with when they were small. Whenever I’d try talking with the older generation about Nintendo or Sega, their eyes would glaze over. They’d mispronounce characters’ names and have trouble retaining other details, like lore, power ups, and control schemes. At times I sensed they were happy that video games made me happy, but something was preventing them from grasping why they made me happy. So they couldn’t relate to me or directly share my enthusiasm. The Super Mario Bros. movie feels like some studio wrote a multimillion dollar check to people like this. They’ve made a movie about something they just don’t understand, which is why it doesn’t work.
